South by Southwest
by wayward-angels
Summary: When Deeks goes missing, Kensi connects his disappearance to a case the team is working on. But when Hetty orders her to stop the search for her partner, Kensi discovers just how far she's willing to go for the ones that she loves. As she searches from the streets of Los Angeles to the Arizona desert, Kensi Blye comes to terms with what it means to truly care about someone.


_**Hello! Please enjoy the first installment of my latest little project. I hope you all had wonderful holidays. Please read and review! :) **_

_It starts out like every other Tuesday morning: five a.m. alarm, stumble out of bed, speed through empty streets beneath a tight blue sky, coffee, Deeks. Except for that when Kensi pulls up outside Deeks' apartment and honks twice, like a bad date, he doesn't come running out. And when she knocks on the door, it's cracked open and stuff is strewn haphazardly around his usually neat apartment. Kensi doesn't have her service weapon with her, but it wouldn't have mattered anyway; whoever was here is long gone now. She stumbles into his bedroom, and there's obviously been a fight-or really rough, interesting sex, but she doesn't think about that for more than a second-because his blanket is on the floor and there's a pillow halfway across the room and there's blood on the side of the closet door. _

_The first person she calls is Callen, and he answers on the second ring, voice low and rough like she's woken him up._

_"It's Deeks," she pants, breathless, fear crawling like a dying animal into her throat. "He's gone." _

"Kensi, we're going to figure this out," Callen tells her as the team-minus their resident detective-huddles around the table in the tech department. "Eric's tracing his phone right now."

Sam shakes his head.

"Kid could be at his girlfriend's house for all we know."

_Since when did Deeks become a kid? _Kensi wonders, but she blurts,

"He doesn't have a girlfriend," before she can stop herself. She sees Callen and Sam exchange glances and she flushes.

"Kensi," Sam's tone is gentle. "Just calm down. Deeks isn't an NCIS agent. He actually _has _a life outside of work."

And Kensi's about to dispute this with another thin argument, _if he had a girlfriend I would know_, _he's my partner and we tell each other things_, but then Eric calls out that he's traced Deeks' cell signal. Kensi's heart drops when she sees the green dot, stationary on the plasma screen. _The Los Angeles River._

The traffic isn't heavy, but Kensi drums her fingers against her denim-clad thigh as Callen speeds towards the cement wash that winds between neighborhoods and industrial zones. He and Sam talk calmly about last night's football game, the recent wedding between two old CIA colleagues. Kensi interrupts them when they start arguing over the radio station.

"Guys, when does this become an official investigation?"

Sam twists around, his 'reassuring older brother' face on.

"Hold your horses, Kens. We don't even know if he's...you know..._missing_."

"Then why the hell would his cell phone be in the LA River, huh?" She snaps, and Sam falls silent. When Callen parks on the concrete bank after skidding illegally off the freeway after Eric shouts over the speakerphone that 'you missed the offramp, go back, go back!', Kensi's the first one out of the car, scanning the cement wash for any signs of Deeks. Nothing. Then she sees the glint of something metallic in the hard sunlight, and Kensi stumbles down the steep bank, splashing through the shallow, dirty water. She snatches a cell phone, screen badly smashed, from the grimy river. She holds it up, her heart thumping like a drum beat and calls out to Sam and Callen.

"This enough evidence for you?"

By noon, they've taken the case to Hetty. Kensi stands beside Callen and Sam as they present the meager evidence. Their operational manager's face is taut, her eyes turning stony as she listens to Kensi recount her story of finding Deeks' apartment torn apart and the smashed cell phone. Hetty's always been stoic, dependable. During trying times, she's the team's rock, their anchor. Naturally, the look of concern on her face is worrisome to her agents.

"You were working on the Ledo case, correct?"

Kensi nods. It's almost routine for them-a Petty Officer shot dead in Burbank, a cache of cocaine and handguns in the trunk of his car. Deeks had been 'liasing' with his old pals at the LAPD because their Narcotics division had been tracking Ledo, hoping to find a connection to the Ruiz drug cartel. Callen had liked one of Ledo's shipmates, a young Petty Officer named Barnes, for the homicides.

"Sounds routine to me," Hetty says. "Nothing too dangerous."

_Everything we do is dangerous, _Kensi wants to say, but no one knows that better than Hetty.

"We weren't even close to finding the killer," Sam adds. "We had a few suspects, but only a few solid leads."

Hetty's gaze shifts across the trio of agents gathered in front of her.

"We'll give it twenty-four hours. If Detective Deeks hasn't returned by tomorrow morning, we'll open the case."

Kensi wants to protest, to insist that this is an emergency because if there's anything that Marty Deeks is it's loyal, and loyal people don't just run off in the middle of the night and toss their cell phones in the Los Angeles River.

"In the meantime, I want Eric repairing Deeks' phone. I want to see what was on it before he threw it away," Callen orders. Eric nods at Nell, and the two techies turn back to the blue glow of their computer screens.

"So what, we just keep working on the Ledo case?" Kensi asks as she, Sam, and Callen make their way back to the bullpen. Another team is working on a high-stake recon mission involving stolen military-grade sonar, and the OSP is buzzing with activity. It would be easy to let the Ledo case slip by for a few hours, do some scouting around in Deeks' personal files.

"Yes. We can't let this take over," Callen reminds her. Kensi knows that it's the truth-they're federal agents, their job is to protect the United States, and nothing should ever stand in the way of that. But when Callen and Sam start leafing through crime scene photos, Kensi scoots over to Deeks' desk and turns on his computer.

_Shit_. It's password protected. _Fantastic. _What in the hell is his password? Probably something to do with surfing or hot girls. Kensi leans against the desk and tries to channel her inner Deeks. Okay, typical SoCal surfer, borderline OCD, corny as hell. 'surferdude' and 'socal' and a host of other wave-related passwords come up negative. Kensi glances around his orderly workspace and it hits her.

_Duh. _The only photograph on his desk is a snapshot of Monty.

She types the dog's name into the password box and she's in. Kensi feels elated for a moment-who said Eric and Nell got to have all the fun?-until she realizes that his email is also password protected. And this time, it's not 'Monty'. She's giving her 'hacking' skills another pathetic go when Callen sneaks up behind her.

"That's not the Ledo case, is it?"

She wheels away, face-to-face with the Senior Lead Agent.

"I was just looking for some files," she replies tartly. "Since Deeks isn't here..."

Callen's mouth flattens into a disapproving line.

"Look, Kens, we'll find him, okay? You heard Hetty."

"Tomorrow could be too late," Kensi reminds him. "Look, I'll keep it on the down-low. But I'm going to find my partner."

Callen sighs in defeat. He's known Kensi for years, and he knows that nothing can stop her. Rules and regulations be damned, if she wants something she's going to get it. Especially when it comes to the people that she cares about.

"Fine. But if Hetty finds out, you're on your own."

Kensi tilts her chin towards the ceiling.

"Challenge accepted."

Under the guise of revisiting the Ledo crime scene, Kensi follows the 405 freeway to Encino. Far from the palatial mansions that the area is known for, Deeks' apartment is located in a rundown building off a busy avenue. Kensi starts by knocking on the neighbor's door; a young woman with shaggy blonde hair answers in pajamas.

"Yeah?"

"I'm Marty's friend," she says. "He didn't show up to work today, our boss told me to come look for him. I guess he's not home...any idea where he might be?"

Pajama girl shakes her head, looking a little dazed.

"No. I don't really know him-he really keeps to himself."

_Interesting. _Deeks is usually pretty outgoing, especially when there are women involved.

"Marty said that it gets pretty loud around here at night," Kensi lies. "You think so?"

She shrugs.

"Sometimes. Like, last night Marty was being really loud, banging around and stuff. It was, like, three in the morning too."

Kensi manages a smile, despite the fear washing over her.

"Thanks," she says. The girl nods, almost closes the door.

"You know," she adds, like an afterthought. "You don't really look like a rocker."

Kensi laughs.

"Excuse me?"

The girl frowns, leans on the doorframe.

"Marty's lead guitarist in a band, right?"

_Oh my God, _Kensi thinks. When she finds Deeks, she's going to give him hell about this.

"Oh yeah," she replies, and the sarcasm shines through. "He gets _all _the ladies."

She waits until Deeks' clueless neighbor closes the door before breaking into her partner's apartment. Of course it's neat as a pin, sparsely decorated. It smells like mint and spice, a sort of musky smell. It's comforting, she realizes, and that thought kind of scares her. She rifles through his drawers, pawing past jeans and t-shirts and flannel shirts-_what the hell, does he even own anything that's _not _casual?-_and finds nothing of remote interest. There's a gun in his sock drawer, and she wonders if it's his service weapon. But it's not a Beretta, it's a Glock. Not his preferred gun, and that makes Kensi wonder if it even belongs to him. She empties it and slides the weapon into her purse.

There's an internet modem in the living room but no laptop. Kensi searches for it, but turns up nothing. There's food in the fridge, chicken marinating in a Tupperware container.

_People who are planning on leaving town aren't planning dinner ahead of time, _Kensi thinks. She leaves with a sour fear rooting itself in the pit of her stomach. The odds that Deeks is missing and in danger are growing with every passing hour. And as she follows the curve of the freeway towards downtown Los Angeles, Kensi feels lost and very alone.


End file.
